artificial swarm first attempt

[bluesman]

hi folks been stressed out today looking at so many ideas of doing a AS !

i have nasty bees and cant hang about when examining them therefore still finding it hard to spot the queen!
so when doing the AS i used a technique that would help me without having to hunt for the queen .....

i found a good Q Cell in the BB with larvae and put it in a nuc with a frame of stores and brood (no queen) -shook two frames of bees in- put nuc where the original hive was and put old hive in a different place.

was this suicidal ? or will it work ?

in the old hive ive noticed sealed cells(but bees dont seemed to of swarmed) do i get rid of these cells?

help

 

[VEG]

probably wont be enough room in the nuc for all the flying bees to return to (assuming it is a good sized colony)

 

[Arfermo]

 

[bluesman]

shall i change nuc for a BB ?

 

[VEG]

I would

 

[bluesman]

thanks for yor help and quick response -ill do that tomorrow evening -hopfully they can manage till then !

 

[FreeFall]

Just a thought - if you can't find the queen, how do you know that she's not now in the nuc box?

 

[Finman]

.
oundationm hive into the site of evel hive and move eveil one.

Take from another hive a brood frame with queen cells, but do not shake the frame.

Let the bees move to that hive.

After 3 days the evil hive will have young bees . Kill the queen and buy a laying queen.

You second hive is going to swarm too. Make to it an AS.

.

 

[enrico]

As I see it you haven't actually done an as. The problem is with the original hive on the new site. You still have an old queen, she will build up flying bee population again and then swarm. You know she has moved but she doesn't. She is in the same hive with brood and food and will be off at the first opportunity. In my opinion what you have done is simply split your hive into two which is not the same as an as. You need to find that queen and knock her on the head, requeen from good stock or let them raise a new one and hope for the best.

 

[bluesman]

enrico you are right! i cannot find the queen when the colony is nasty ! so i thought id try this method -tonite when i changed the nuc to a bb to give the flying bees more room they were bonkers -they were vicious !
i will have to requeen as you said the hive with the old queen -if i can find the bitch!

thanks again need all the help at this stage

 

[enrico]

There are plenty of threads on finding a nasty queen!! Do a few searches on 'finding queen'
Best of luck
E